There’s now discussion on whether or not any actual chemical weapons were taken out. At first it seemed only the air base and aircraft were targeted, now there’s a thought a chemical factory might also have been destroyed.No-one knows for sure yet.

It seems pointless to take out the air base and aircraft that delivered the gas and not take out the chemical weapons themselves. The talking heads on Sky tried to explain it as ‘sending a message’ to Assad – do it again and we’ll destroy more. Because one of those heads was Jim Molan I ditched Sky and went over to Aljazeera. Their comment is far better.

Malcolm Turnbull has hinted that Australia may be involved in an expanded US-led military strike on Syria, after outrage at Tuesday’s chemical weapons attack in Idlib.

The prime minister, speaking shortly before it emerged the US was launching missile strikes on a Syrian military airfield near Homs, said the attack “cries out” for a strong response and that Russia had to take some responsibility.

“I can’t go into any more detail than that, other than to say that I’ve spoken only a little while ago with the defence minister [Marise Payne] and the chief of the defence force [Mark Binskin]” he told 3AW radio on Friday.

“You know where we stand. We have condemned this attack utterly. It cries out for a strong response and we are in very … close and constant communication with our allies, in particular the United States.”

Turnbull probably thinks all his Christmases he come at once. He gets to chest-beat, make Churchillian speeches and come on all aggressive. He no doubt thinks that will be a real vote-winner. Saved by an air-strike!

Trump has probably seriously upset the Chinese. He had a state dinner with President Xi and then minutes after Xi left Trump ran the pre-recorded announcement of the attack. Xi is still in the US and due to have more talks with Trump and they will be very difficult. The US strike was done off their own bat, no involvement from the UN Security Council at all, just Trump doing his own thing. China takes a dim view of countries acting outside the UNSC. Xi is going to be very angry about that and about not being informed about the strike earlier.

They were all pushing Trump rather than crawling to him. Headlines everywhere having a go at “girly man” Trump. Madman McCain was most animated. Now THERE is a war monger. Still trying to make up for being a POW ?

Of course Shorten will go along with anything Turnbull proposes. Australia is already deeply involved in Syria with Labor’s full approval. If Turnbull decides to do more then Shorten will agree. We’ll be in for more rubbish from Turnbull and Shorten about the importance of protecting Australia from the evils of Daesh.

I think the last Labor leader to oppose joining the US in yet another war was Simon Crean, in 2003, strongly condemning Howard sending troops to Iraq. He was forced to resign later the same year because of poor polling and we ended up with Latham.